Strumming on the dark side
Making sad songs feel good with Delta Mirror
By Bliss 03/11/2010
The Delta Mirror’s “Machines That Listen,” a nine-track concept album just issued on Lefse Records, is set in a hospital, each song representing a different room and the heartrending stories unfolding therein. If you tossed Radiohead, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Dead Man’s Bones and Big Pink in a cosmic blender, this could reasonably be what you’d expect to hear pouring into your earbuds — a natural fit, had they been recorded seven years earlier, for the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation.”
Breezy and summer-light they ain’t. Still, the electro-shoegaze trio’s songs are emotional and strangely beautiful, melding metallic textures with plaintive piano chords, electronic effects, melancholy guitar and disembodied vocals that express disillusionment but yearn for some kind of enduring connection. If that sounds downbeat, it is … and yet, ultimately, not.
Most of the songs take their time reaching their musical conclusion — “A Song About the End” clocks in at eight minutes — and the subject matter, while dramatic, is nothing if not relatable at a time when hospitals commonly symbolize dead ends and patient powerlessness.
The anger voiced in lead-off single “He Was Worse Than the Needle He Gave You” ("How could they say he did you no harm") is given grandeur by the song’s almost orchestral arrangement.
“A Room for Waiting” unspools like another mini-movie as its protagonist begs to know, “How many were there before me?”
The strummy strains of “It’s Dark and I Welcome the Calm” ascend to an oddly rousing crescendo, while “Hold Me Down Just Don’t Let Me Go” views a stabbing victim through the eyes of an ER nurse. “And the Radio Played On” depicts a dying old man clinging to his final moments of awareness with his wife, who thoughtfully flips channels knowing that forever after the chosen song would be the one “that returns her to this moment.”
Vocalist/guitarist Craig Gordon and keyboardist David Bolt have been working together for a decade, first crafting electronic layers and beats as a hip-hop duo. Now bassist Karrie K. helps hold down the bottom end and sweetens Delta Mirror’s intensely dreamy atmospheres with occasional harmony. Gordon and Bolt remain fans of the Anticon crew, and in fact reached out to Alias and Healamonster & Tarsier for a remixed version of “Machines Will Listen” that’s slated to be released later this year.
Delta Mirror are midway through their monthlong residency at the Echo, 1822 Sunset Blvd., Echo Park; they return 8:30 p.m. Monday, March 15, with guests Pop Noir and Cannoneers. Free admission. Info: (213) 413-8200. myspace.com/thedeltamirror.
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